Qualla: Phnom Santuk

Phnom Santuk: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan Brending (2eight), CC BY-SA 3.0 de. Below the southern peak, where the trees close in and the light turns green, the boulders have faces. Carvers worked them into reclining Buddhas long ago - some more than ten metres from crown to heel - so that a figure at rest appears to be dreaming inside the rock itself. More recent hands have added concrete versions alongside the old stone ones, and the two generations lie together without apology. Phnom Santuk rises 207 metres above the paddy country of Kampong Thom province, which almost anywhere else in the world would make it a hill. Here it is the most sacred mountain the province has.

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Image: Stefan Brending (2eight) | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Phnom Santuk: Eight Hundred and Nine Steps

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dtfman, CC0. There are two ways up. The old way is a stone stairway of 809 steps, flanked most of the way by statues, so that the climb becomes a slow procession past figures who seem to have been waiting for you. The new way is a paved road, 2.5 kilometres of it, which spares the knees and c...

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Phnom Santuk: Relics Carried North from Angkor

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan Brending (2eight), CC BY-SA 3.0 de. The Cambodian Royal Chronicles put the hill's founding story at around 1496, when King Thommo Reachea I arranged for Buddha relics to be moved out of Preah Thong's stupa at Angkor and rehoused in the village of Khvav Brah Dhatu, near Phnom Santuk. Relics travel for reasons - poli...

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Phnom Santuk: The Furthest Point of Chenla II

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dtfman, CC0. In the autumn of 1971 this hill was a military objective. Operation Chenla II ran from 20 August to 3 December, the Khmer Republic's attempt to reopen Route 6 and push the People's Army of Vietnam back out of the country's centre. The advance began well. Government forces retook ...

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Image: Dtfman | CC0

Phnom Santuk: The Hill Keeps Working

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan Brending (2eight), CC BY-SA 3.0 de. Nothing about the mountain is finished. Construction continues near the hilltop. Concrete Buddhas join stone ones under the trees, the newer ones easy to tell apart and nobody much troubled by the difference. The Phnom Santuk Resort offers nature-based tourism at the foot of a pi...

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Image: Stefan Brending (2eight) | CC BY-SA 3.0 de